


Not This Time

by Curator



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Episode: s01e01 Caretaker, Episode: s02e18 Death Wish, Episode: s03e07 Sacred Ground, Episode: s04e20 Vis à Vis, Episode: s05e01 Night, Episode: s06e01 Equinox Part II, Episode: s07e16-17 Workforce, F/F, F/M, Gen, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:34:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25775944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Curator/pseuds/Curator
Summary: When the razor’s edge cuts the other way. Ficlets that flip one Kathryn Janeway decision for each season of Voyager. Whatever her choice was in the show … here, it's reversed.
Relationships: Chakotay/Kathryn Janeway, Jaffen/Kathryn Janeway, Kathryn Janeway/B’Elanna Torres (sorta), Kathryn Janeway/Compression Phaser Rifle, Kathryn Janeway/Guilt, Kathryn Janeway/Mark Johnson, Kathryn Janeway/Power, Kathryn Janeway/Q
Comments: 124
Kudos: 46
Collections: Into Fate's Mirror ~ Action-Adventure August





	1. Caretaker

**Author's Note:**

> So much appreciation to the-goofball for beta wisdom that improved these stories in ways large and small. If there’s anything you don’t like, though, all final ... decisions ... were mine. Thanks also to cnroth for a brain boost right when I needed it.

**_Caretaker_** _: The self-destruct program has been damaged. Now this installation will not be destroyed. But it must be. The Kazon must not be allowed to gain control of it. They will annihilate the Ocampa._ _  
_ **_Tuvok (to Janeway)_** _: Shall I activate the program to get us back?_

•

•

•

The mattress under her back is softer than standard in starship sickbays. 

Not that she’s ever been a patient in _Voyager’s_ sickbay. Could she be there? Some of her skin feels regenerated and everything aches.

“Doctor, I think she’s waking up!”

Mark. 

Everything is dark and blurry, but a hand grasps hers and she knows it’s him. 

A bright light shines in her eyes and pain lurches from her forehead to her stomach. She turns her head, not wanting to vomit, but heaves come anyway and she isn’t sure what to think when nothing comes out.

The hand tightens. 

“I apologize for the scan.” The voice is unfamiliar. “I’m Dr. Bashir. Your ship drifted out of the Badlands with minimal systems operational. You’re on Deep Space Nine. You’ve been in my infirmary for nearly two weeks.”

“You’re going to be okay, Kath.” Why is Mark whispering? “You got bounced around pretty badly, but you’re going to be okay.”

Crying. She can hear crying from elsewhere in the infirmary. Deep. Masculine. But familiar, as if she has heard that person cry before.

Deep in her memory — years and years back — that cry reverberates.

Her nostrils shudder. She knows Deep Space Nine was once a Cardassian space station, but that’s not why she can smell Cardassians now.

The person crying is Admiral Paris.

“What … ” her throat burns and she licks her dry lips, “... what happened?”

“We were hoping you would be able to tell us.” There’s a click as Dr. Bashir closes his medical tricorder. “Your ship showed traces of residual polarized magnetic energy. We hypothesized that once you arrested the Maquis, something in the Badlands affected _Voyager_. But we don’t know why bodies of the Maquis were on the bridge or why the ship seemed to have suffered tremendous inertial stressors.”

The Maquis.

The Caretaker. 

The Array.

Tuvok had said he could program the Array to send them home. She had approved his plan, then re-set the Array to self-destruct five seconds after it sent out a displacement wave to return _Voyager_ to the Alpha Quadrant. 

But the journey to the Delta Quadrant had killed dozens of crewmembers and heavily damaged the ship. What had she been thinking? The Caretaker knew how to deploy his own technology. It had been hubris to believe they could safely return home using methods they barely understood.

Goosebumps prickle her skin.

If Dr. Bashir doesn’t know what happened — if all he has are scans and hypotheses — then no one else from her ship has gained consciousness. 

“Who,” she rasps, “is alive?”

Mark’s hand squeezes hers. “A few are holding on. Minimal life signs. We lost Harry Kim yesterday. Tom Paris went about fifteen minutes ago. The families — the families are all here. Well, T’Pel left a few days ago. But we’re all supporting each other, Kath. They’ll be happy when they hear that someone finally woke up.”

And she knows why she didn’t vomit. 

It’s not because her stomach is empty. 

She’s empty. 

She tried to take a shortcut and she killed a hundred and fifty people.

She has no soul, no moral center, no right to live.

But she understands, as sure as Admiral Paris’ grief echoes in her ears, that living will be the universe’s perfect punishment for what she has done. 


	2. Death Wish

**_Q_** _: I'll take you home. Before you know it, you'll be scampering across the meadow with your little puppies, the grass beneath your bare feet. A man, coming over the hill way in the distance, waves to you. You run to be in his arms and as you get closer you see that it's ... me._  
**_Janeway_** _: You?_ _  
_ **_Q_** _: Forget Mark. I know how to show a girl a good time. How would you like a ticker-tape parade down Sri Lanka Boulevard? The captain who brought_ Voyager back. A celebrated hero. I never did anything like that for Jean-Luc. But I feel very close to you. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because you have such authority and yet manage to preserve your femininity so well.

•

•  


•  


The grass tickles her bare feet. Then she’s waving and smiling, ticker-tape from the parade down Sri Lanka Boulevard catching in her hair.

It’s a shame that Mark doesn’t take the news so well. 

“You prostituted yourself, Kath?” His shouting is a bit much, she thinks. Typical of a lesser species. “How does that line up with your Starfleet ideals — going flat on your back to cut short the journey home?”

On her back?

Such a silly creature. As if that’s how it works in the Continuum.

Of course she demanded full status as a Q. If she had remained human, Q could have tricked her in some way — brought her home without her crew or some other nonsense.

This way, she sees to everyone’s happiness.

Checks in from time to time. 

But their years go by so quickly and soon Chakotay has a grey beard and Tom leans on a cane and Harry, sweet Harry, has fingers stiff with arthritis.

She tells Q and asks if he, too, finds this odd.

“Don’t worry about them,” Q whispers in her ear. She remembers when whispers in her ear swirled with warm breath, when a corporeal form was comfortable, when the universe held questions that seemed unanswerable. “Shall we dance?”

And so they waltz through nebulae and pulsars, samba on planetary rings and comet trails, tango across stars and asteroids. 

Oh, there’s something she has been meaning to do.

She checks on her crew again — and finds dust.

“When did this happen?” she asks.

“Earth?” Q doesn’t hide his disdain. “It’s been gone for years. Decades? I’m not sure. Do you miss it, Kathy?”

She does, and considers bringing it back, bringing them all back, recreating her ship and Starfleet and even the Federation.

But there is music in the cosmos and she whirls away with Q for another dance. 

Perhaps another day, she will bring them back.

Perhaps another day, she will reflect on what she could have learned had she stayed an insignificant human on an insignificant starship. 

Perhaps.


	3. Sacred Ground

_ (They are speaking about Kes.) _ _  
_ **_EMH:_ ** _ She should be awake and alert.  _ _  
_ **_Neelix:_ ** _ Why isn't she?  _ _  
_ **_EMH:_ ** _ I can't explain it. Her vital signs are unstable. I have to discontinue treatment. I don't understand it.  _ _  
_ **_Neelix:_ ** _ Can't we try again?  _ _  
_ **_EMH:_ ** _ It's too dangerous.  _ _  
_ **_Janeway:_ ** _ Do you have any other options?  _ _  
_ **_EMH:_ ** _ No. I'm sorry, Captain, but it appears that everything you went through was meaningless. _

•

•  


•  


People say all the right things. 

“You did everything you could, Captain.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“No one blames you.”

But she tells the Doctor not to correct the tremors in her hands or the strains in her arms, legs, back, or abdominal muscles. Everything will heal on its own and she wants her body to recover slowly. 

The punishment preceded the crime, after all.

She refuses a sedative, too. This means that she screams herself awake at night as a snake rattle stiffens her spine or the crags of a faraway stone scrape her fingers. Her chest burns and her forearm throbs.

In retrospect, the first ritual wasn’t that bad. But when she went back and requested another chance to save Kes, the physical demands became torturous.

She accepted them all.

But then her guide murmured, “Kathryn, if you don’t want to leap, I can’t push you,” and sent her back to _Voyager_.

She had pleaded over the comm system, only to be met with denials that were polite, but firm.

And now there are star-streaks outside her viewport and her fingers, still papery from fluid loss, tremble as she fastens her dress uniform.

The walk from her quarters to the airponics bay is quiet, as if the ship itself is in mourning.

Neelix meets her just inside the door. Behind him are rows of mourners in dress uniforms and a blue-blossomed wreath on Kes’ casket. 

“You don’t have to do this, Captain.” His eyes are bloodshot and he motions toward the padd in her hand that they both know holds the eulogy.

“It’s my responsibility, Neelix.” Her voice quivers. “I’m so sorry. I couldn’t ...”

And the last shadow of her composure, of her ability to comport herself with dignity in front of her crew, slips away as sure as the stone fell from her hands time and time again in the sacred caves, and, knowing that no one in attendance will ever again see her as their resolute leader, she crumples into Neelix’s arms and weeps.


	4. Vis a Vis

**_Janeway:_** _This has to stop, Tom. Your conduct lately has been bizarre, and I've heard far too many complaints from far too many people to dismiss it. Chakotay, the Doctor, Seven of Nine. They're all worried about you. And so am I. _ _  
_ **_Steth-in-Paris:_** _ You're right, Captain. I need some rest. I'll go right to my quarters.  _ _  
_ **_Janeway:_** _Tom! As your captain and as your friend, I want you to report to sickbay for some tests. We have to find out if there's something physical that's causing this behavior. _ _  
_ **_Steth-in-Paris:_** _This is crazy. I don't need any help. _

•

•  


•  


She strides through the corridor — broad shoulders back, flat chest out — nodding to crewmembers who seem shorter than they did a few days ago.

Are their nods back respectful or concerned? Is her slight smile reassuring, or does it confuse them? And is she walking steadily in these big feet within flat boots? 

She steps into the turbolift.

“Captain,” Harry greets her.

Her fingers twitch to clasp the younger man on the shoulder. Is the instinct this body’s muscle memory of friendship? Or is it a physical expression of concern from a commanding officer toward a subordinate? She isn’t sure. 

“Good morning, Harry.”

There is no small talk.

They enter the mess hall and she loads her tray before carefully lowering herself into the empty chair across from Chakotay. Dropping into a seat without concern for her testicles is a mistake she has no desire to repeat.

“Good morning, Commander,” she says. 

“Captain.” 

She wants to ask if scans have located the ship with her body — her real body. 

She misses her shorter legs, her longer hair. 

She didn’t think she would miss fastening a bra every morning or having to pee sitting down, but those actions were second nature. Now she reaches in dresser drawers for items that don’t fit and splatters urine no matter what position she tries. 

“Long-range scans still can’t detect the ship where Steth and Tom may be.” Chakotay slices his pancake as if it were a live grenade. “That is, Tom’s …”

“Consciousnesses?” she supplies, spreading peanut butter on her first slice of toast. The new foods she craves are all right, but eating so much is exhausting.

Chakotay nods.

This thoughtfulness is a gift. She didn’t even have to ask, and there was Chakotay with the information she wanted. 

Her fingers are halfway across the table to grasp Chakotay’s, but she pulls back, blond hairs glinting on the back of her hand. She finds her collar and stretches cloth under the four pips. “Thank you for your concern, Commander. I appreciate it.”

And just as Chakotay can seem to read her mind, she knows what Chakotay is thinking — that someone should have stopped the captain from walking her helmsman to his quarters, that her erratic behavior afterward should have been investigated, that her insistence on beaming to Steth’s ship by herself should have been overridden.

But Steth’s ship disappeared and the location of Tom’s consciousness within Steth’s physical form — as well as Steth’s consciousness within the captain’s female body — remain a frustrating mystery.

Not that waking up in Tom’s quarters had been a clear-cut situation. She had called for lights and been so startled by her own deep voice that she had put her hands up to fight, then stared at her longer fingers, bigger knuckles, and wider palms.

Thank goodness the Doctor corroborated her story and her command codes still work.

“We’ll get through this, Chakotay,” she says, and she isn’t sure whether she’s speaking personally or professionally or in some complicated combination.

She shifts in her seat. 

She understands now why men adjust themselves, but she absolutely refuses to indulge in such behavior.

Chakotay stares, but it’s not at her. Someone is approaching their table.

She knows who it is without looking.

“Captain, I’m sorry to disturb your breakfast.” B’Elanna‘s eyes drift to the peanut butter toast, then snap to a place between blond eyebrows. “The warp core upgrades need your approval if we’re going to begin on schedule.”

Right. Those upgrades were at the top of her to-do list, but she fell asleep. Needing eight hours a night is a waste of time, yet this body can’t seem to function on less.

“My apologies, Lieutenant,” she says. “I’ll approve them right away.”

She stands, but too quickly, and her body brushes B’Elanna’s. They’re chest to chest for a second — a long, agonizing second during which the twitching between her legs is almost immediate.

B’Elanna jumps back and Chakotay scrambles up. 

“At ease.” She raises a hand, pretends she’s speaking to them, not to the eager creature between her legs. “I’ll be in my ready room.”

She grabs her tray and forces her gait to be as smooth as possible.

But her face is warm.

A vagina is polite, damnit, hiding attraction within underwear, never signaling to a first officer or a chief engineer or anyone else that the captain is a person who notices other people.

That the captain is a person who notices a lot of other people. 

That the captain is a person who notices both Chakotay and B’Elanna watching her walk away — which is not helping matters.

She shivers, suddenly and violently yearning for cramps, bloating, and sore breasts. She wants the melancholy of ovulation mucus. She aches for a warm bath that doesn’t require concern for someone else’s privacy and she would kill to absentmindedly reach for her coffee mug without fear she’ll topple it when her too-thick fingers fumble around the handle.

But she doesn’t dare alter a body that isn’t hers.

Even though she could be stuck in it for another day, another week, another month … or for the rest of her life.


	5. Night

**_Janeway:_** _… Your orders are to proceed to the vortex. Use whatever means necessary to fight your way past the Malon freighter. I'll stay behind in a shuttlecraft and destroy the vortex. Tuvok, I'll need a class two shuttle armed with photon torpedoes. Tom, set a course for —_ _  
_**_Torres:_** _Forget it. We're not going to let you die out here._ **_  
_****_Janeway:_** _Have a little faith, B'Elanna. I'll have a shuttle, plenty of rations. I'll survive._ _  
_**_Paris:_** _Alone in the Delta quadrant? No offense, but —_

•

•  


•

She hallucinates, sometimes. Sees Chakotay, his hands open and his voice soft. 

“You can come back. We know you keep your shuttle just outside the range of  _ Voyager’s _ sensors. But we think it would be safer for you onboard.”

Her compression phaser rifle is set to kill, and she always aims it at the hallucination until it disappears, dissolves as if taken by a transporter but she knows it’s no transporter. 

It’s a holodeck. They beamed her onto the holodeck one night while she slept and she just needs to find the exit. 

Except there is no exit because she isn’t on the holodeck. It’s her shuttle and no one can come onboard because the hallucination is right. She stays just outside sensor range, ever since she caught up with _Voyager_ a few months ago. 

Weeks ago. 

Years ago. 

It doesn’t matter. 

Her stack of rations gets smaller, but then there are more. Once, she looked out a viewport and the star-streaks were like transwarp, and _Voyager_ had her shuttle in a tractor beam. Her hands moved quickly across the console, trying to break the lock. But nothing worked and then the stars slowed and were different. 

Sometimes, a star talks to her. 

It might be her father. 

Her mother. 

Her sister.

Once, it was Admiral Paris. “Starfleet officers must submit to a medical examination once a year. It’s your turn, Captain. Let’s go to sickbay.” But he had the vocal cadences wrong, and she told the Doctor to leave her alone.

She likes being alone.

She sleeps most of the time. Dreams of a blue sky and green grass and sitting high in a tree. Sometimes, Mark is in the dream. He tells her that he trusts her to go away because she always comes back.

She tries to explain this the next time the hallucination visits. 

“I always come back, Chakotay,” she says, her finger on the trigger of her compression phaser rifle. “You just have to trust me.”

The hallucination dips its head. “We’re worried about you, Kathryn. Your plan worked — we believed you changed your mind and, before anyone knew what was happening, you sent _Voyager_ through the vortex to safety. But you’ve spent too many years on this shuttle, barely existing. The Doctor thinks he can help you.”

The compression phaser rifle hums in her ear as she aims. “You don’t trust me.”

The hallucination disappears and she knows it’s no transporter. Or the holodeck. 

She climbs back into bed, the compression phaser rifle by her side, its power indicator a notch lower than it was a few minutes before. 


	6. Equinox, part II

**_Janeway:_** _The last time we welcomed you aboard, you took advantage of our trust. You betrayed this crew. I won't make that mistake again. Noah Lessing, Marla Gilmore, James Morrow, Brian Sofin, Angelo Tassoni, you are hereby stripped of rank.... _

•

•  


•

She doesn’t care that crewmembers won’t look her in the eye.

She doesn’t give a damn about sitting by herself in the mess hall.

And if the only thing anyone says to her is, “aye, Captain” or “yes, ma’am,” then that’s fine. 

Rules exist for a purpose, and Starfleet General Order Four is crystal clear: “Starfleet expressly forbids the death penalty with only one exception — mutiny.”

And the former crew of the _Equinox_ , with the exception of Marla Gilmore, mutinied against their captain.

There was no chance she would allow them the same opportunity on _Voyager_. Defiance of the command chain could become a cancer that would metastasize through her ship, destroying everything she had worked so hard to protect.

The trials were swift, and removing oxygen from the brig seemed the safest option.

“How will ... you sleep ... at night … knowing … what you’ve … done?” An interesting, if misguided, question from James Morrow.

“If ... I cut you … would you … bleed … Starfleet blue?” Such immature last words from Angelo Tassoni.

“You are … a stone-cold … bitch.” Ah, Noah Lessing. Of course he would break instead of dying with dignity.

She exited the brig gratified she had done what she could to rectify the deaths of the creatures they had killed, the rules they had flouted, and, of course, the captain they had schemed against. They chose their path. She merely delivered the consequences. 

Of course no one in her crew argues with her.

They know the punishment for mutiny. 

And _Voyager_ — _Voyager_ runs just fine. 

Thanks to a captain who upholds protocol and hierarchy.

No matter what.


	7. Workforce

**_Memory-altered Janeway:_** _Why did you call me captain? _ _  
_ **_Chakotay:_** _Because that's who you are. _ _  
_ **_Memory-altered Janeway:_** _That's absurd. So what are you saying, that I was brought here by force, too? That my memories were manipulated? _ _  
_ **_Chakotay:_** _I know it sounds strange. _ _  
_ **_Memory-altered Janeway:_** _Helping you was a mistake. _ _  
_ **_Chakotay:_** _Listen to me…. _

•

•  


•

She taps her console and a broad smile spreads across her face. The reactor coils look good today. Improvements in thermal coefficiency might even put her in line for a promotion.

_ You could probably run that power plant. _

Her smile reverses. Why does she keep thinking about that strange man, Amal Kotay or Chakotay or whatever his name was? When he said she could run the plant, he seemed so sure. 

Almost as sure as Tom and Annika seemed when she called the police on them. Fortunately, the authorities recognized symptoms of dysphoria syndrome, and the bartender and efficiency monitor have become familiar faces to her, apologetic about those days of misinformation and confusion.

But Amal — her chin juts with resentment. He never wavered in attempts to manipulate her with his talk of her being a captain, with his reprogramming of the dermal regenerator to make it look like they were the same race, with his pleas for her to confirm his story.

Hopefully he’s gotten treatment. 

It’s a shame, though she understands, of course, that the medical personnel can’t disclose his condition. 

Her console beeps. It’s time to go home. 

She gives her reactor coils a final check, grabs her cardigan, and hurries to clock out. Jaffen has the day off, so he’ll have dinner ready at their apartment. His cooking isn’t the most exciting, but she doesn’t like excitement. She likes routine and decorative art and solid ground underfoot.

It’s cold outside and she hunches into the wind.

“Focus on the now,” she mutters, her hand holding her sweater tight around her neck. “Stop thinking about Amal.”

She reminds herself that her life here is everything she could want — comfortable, safe, easy. Leaving Earth with its overpopulation, violence, and unemployment was one of the best decisions she’s ever made.

And she makes great decisions.


End file.
